Graduate School of Management Fall 2003 • Issue 3

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Faculty Leading IT Research— Mary Gilly, Alladi Venkatesh Ken Kraemer, Vijay Gurbaxani

Dean’s Message

1

The School

ITM from the Inside Out 3

Community

First American Fast Forwards with Technology 4

Research

Faculty’s IT Research Hits Home & Away 7

Leadership

Irish Eyes Are Smiling On IT 8

Students

Get MBA, Jumpstart Career 10

Alumni

Grads Create Top Tech Jobs 12 14

Class Notes Coming Up

GSM & Alumni Network Events

Cover photos by Robert A. Peterson Photography Background image, Corbis

The UC Irvine Graduate School of Management has always lead discovery and education in the use of information technology (IT) to more creatively and effectively manage. This first issue in our second year of i is an opportunity to provide an update on current innovations in the strategic use of information technology coming from our faculty, staff, students and alumni. Nearly two decades ago, our own Professor Kenneth Kraemer, Taco Bell Professor of Information Technology for Management, was among the first to warn that organizations’ heavy investments in technology did not necessarily lead to expected payoffs. Later our faculty were among those to say that revolutionizing technologies do not change complex interdependent organizations and markets overnight. This issue describes just a few of the many ways UC Irvine’s Graduate School of Management’s faculty, staff, students and alumni are taking the lead. On the facing page you’ll meet two innovative leaders on our staff who helped GSM achieve its fourth-place ranking in IT by the Wall Street Journal this fall. We describe the research of Professors Mary Gilly and Christine Beckman in helping the U.S. Navy to better understand the role of Internet access on the morale and family life of service personnel deployed in far flung locations overseas. Professors Ken Kraemer and Vijay Gurbaxani and their colleagues are examining different aspects of oursourcing. Professor Alladi Venkatesh is working with a community innovator to study how residents use the information resources in California’s first fully-networked, planned community.

i is published three times a year by the UC Irvine Graduate School of Management Communications Office, MPAA Suite 210 Irvine, CA 92697-3130

Parker Kennedy, president of The First American Corporation, co-chair of our Real Estate Program Board and member of the school’s Dean’s Board of Directors, tells how First American’s pioneering use of the Internet helped to catapult the company to a $4.7 billion, world-wide information resources provider.

Editor

As you would expect, our students and alumni are pioneers in this revolution as well.

Linda McCrerey

Contributing Writers

Susannah Abbey, Aurora D. Abt John Gregory, Imran Husain

Photography

Robert A. Peterson, Michael T. Jones, Liz Mediavilla, Linda McCrerey, Wilson Kwong

Art Direction

Patricia Bacall, Bacall:Creative

Printing

Meridian Graphics

Dean Jone L. Pearce

The School

John Clarke

ITM

from the

INSIDE OUT By John Gregory

GSM could not be leading the Information Technology for Management revolution without its own world class IT infrastructure. John Clarke and Tom Eppel are Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside, respectively, of GSM’s highly-touted ITM program. By day, the sandy-blond-haired Clarke manages the school’s technology infrastructure, from its Support Center to its Catalyst, the award-winning intranet for students and faculty. By night, unless there is a tech problem that keeps him at the office, Clarke removes his assistant dean/chief information officer hat and relaxes at home by going, in his words, “right back to geeky things like high

definition TV, TiVo and wireless systems for the house. I also like dogs; I have two of them.” By day, the salt-and-pepper pony-tailed Eppel manages the integration of ITM into the school’s curriculum. By night, the German-born assistant dean of curriculum development spends time in his garage in Temecula, Calif. No ordinary garage. Eppel converted it into a black-walled disco studio where he records music and watches movies on a monster screen. Once a year, Eppel opens his studio, complete with fog machines and lightshow, to GSM students who bid for a dance party during the school’s Challenge for Charity auction. The human sides of Clarke and Eppel help them place their customers—GSM students, faculty and staff—first. “Notice that the ‘T’ is in the center of ITM, but it is not the focus of our program,” Eppel told incoming MBA students during orientation meetings last month. “Instead, technology is the enabler that links information to management. ITM never has been a trendy dot-com program and we don’t train software developers or technologists. “GSM teaches business leaders the fundamentals of management with a twist; namely, how business functions are affected by and can be dramatically improved by the wealth of information that technology brings to the table. This makes our MBA program more competitive.”

Thomas Eppel

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This fall, the Wall Street Journal ranked GSM the fourth best business school in the world for information technology. “That’s quite an achievement,” Clarke says, “when you consider how young we are and that only MIT, Carnegie Mellon and University of Texas are ranked above us.”

a Web site from scratch for their students,” Clarke says. “Now, professors put their materials on Catalyst.” CIO magazine named Catalyst as one of the top 50 intranet systems in the world and the only one developed by a university. GSM has drawn enough attention to prompt business schools at UC Berkeley and Purdue University to license Catalyst for their faculty and students.

Communications student assistants Wilson Kwong and Vien Lao edit photos on new LCD monitors.

Clarke began building GSM’s technical infrastructure in 1986, starting with instructional labs. Under Clarke’s direction, GSM became the first business school to install network connections in every seat in the large classrooms, and the second school to give laptop computers to all students. Clarke and Kenneth Kraemer, professor of management information systems, obtained a grant from Toshiba in 1986 for the laptops. Catalyst is the brainchild of Clarke and several members of his staff, including Ben Mehling, instructional development manager. “For almost a year, I looked into purchasing an existing intranet,” Clarke says. “At the same time, Ben and his gang had been writing their own system for us. I knew Catalyst was a winner when I saw how comprehensive the calendar was for faculty and students.” The Catalyst Calendar lists the class schedule, dates for quizzes and other assignments, field trips, teacher assistant sessions, faculty office hours, campus events and PowerPoint lectures. When users click on the Courses tab, they find syllabi, required texts, faculty policies and links to Calendar. The Personal tab focuses on career management, including a resume database, posting of interviews and internships and a “roadmap” so students can chart their progress since arriving at GSM. Catalyst has a directory for classmates, professors, staff and alumni. In the Student Lounge section, students can view their grades. The most frequently used section of Catalyst is GSM’s E-Library. Here, students, faculty and staff gain access to industry databases, encyclopedias and other references, newspaper and magazine databases and links to other libraries on campus and throughout the UC system. During student orientations on Catalyst, Clarke drew a laugh when he showed a slide of a hunched-over professor writing, “I will put my course on-line next year,” multiple times on a blackboard, á la Bart Simpson. “That’s how things were before Catalyst—every professor had to create

Mr. Inside—“the emperor of our infrastructure,” as Eppel calls Clarke—also manages the four-member Support Center, open six days a week, days and evenings. During the summer, the faculty-student Help Desk installed 153 new computers with LCD pivot displays and Windows XP operating systems. Meanwhile, Mr. Outside works with faculty to tweak the ITM portions of GSM’s core classes, the electives that are oriented toward information technology, and the ITM labs. Eppel says financial statement analysis has replaced e-commerce as the most popular elective with a strong tech bent. Other electives include investment portfolio-building, brand management simulation, business dynamics, supply chain management and the social and political implications of IT. Laboratories include the Lincoln Mercury Lab in Marketing, taught by Professor Connie Pechmann. She describes how information that is used with data mining techniques can produce marketing targeted to small demographic areas. There are other labs on operations management, management science and e-business. ITM is embedded into the PhD curriculum as well. Eppel assists with other IT-related programs at GSM, such as the Center for Entrepreneurship’s annual campuswide Business Plan Competition and the Irvine Innovation Initiative (I3), in which students the work with experienced entrepreneurs to transform business ideas into viable enterprises. “Students, businesses and other stakeholders work with GSM’s faculty, staff and alumni to further develop ITM at the school,” Eppel says. “Whether we get their feedback from surveys or by talking to them informally over a beer, we pick up knowledge that makes our program even better.”

Community

First American

FASTforwards with TECHNOLOGY By Linda McCrerey

Parker S. Kennedy stands with one foot in the past and one in the future. This balance has made him a valuable resource over the years as co-chair of several GSM Real Estate Conferences.

Parker S. Kennedy

As president of The First American Corporation, he has built a modern marvel based on traditional values and a venerable history. First American traces its roots to 1889 and has been headed by Kennedy family members since 1894.

We monitor the owner’s real estate taxes, appraisals, closing escrow paperwork, even foreclosures.”

Parker S. Kennedy believes in an old-fashioned work ethic, loyalty to the firm, diligence, thoroughness and friendly customer service. At the sprawling company headquarters in Santa Ana, Calif., the formal layout and Jeffersonian architecture belie the advanced technology infrastructure that made First American the nation’s leading diversified provider of business information.

First American also launched into diversification, acquiring non-title businesses, including motor vehicle information, credit reports, drug screening information, criminal records, and property and casualty insurance—the list keeps growing. With each new acquisition, First American strives to leverage its IT infrastructure to speed information delivery across the company’s network and directly to its customers.

How did First American grow from family-owned Orange County Title Company to a Fortune 500 company—an international powerhouse with 28,000 employees in 1,400 offices and $4.7 billion in revenues?

Five years ago, the company completed a merger with Experian that combined their respective real estate information subsidiaries into a new company. Thus, First American found itself in the business of holding the nation’s largest database of real estate data—1.5 billion recorded documents with details such as last owner and sale price. Spotting yet another opportunity, the firm began selling property information to itself and its competitors.

By seizing opportunities, diversifying and using IT to create innovative products and services. Parker S. Kennedy realized that parties to real estate transactions didn’t want to deal with 20 different companies, just one. So he aggressively bought up “mom-and-pop” real estate-related businesses that did transactions by hand. From 1985 to 1995, First American made 60-plus acquisitions, using computer technology to unify the holdings and automate their operations. “We saw an opportunity to sell customers one product, real estate information,” he says. “We decided to provide everything needed to close real estate transactions, such as credit information for the lender and flood zone reports.

Kennedy praises his IT staff, especially John Hollenbeck, executive vice president of technology, and Roger Hull, senior vice president and chief information officer. “Working together, they changed the way real estate is processed,” he says. One of Orange County’s most generous benefactors, First American several years ago gifted $100,000 to GSM, which supports the Real Estate Management Program headed by G. Chris Davis.

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Research

Faculty IT Research HITS HOME & Away By John Gregory

A naval officer spent four months at sea and, without access to the Internet or phones on board, communicated only by snail-mail with his wife and children. Ten years later when he went to sea, he could email home almost every day. He helped his wife buy a TV by surfing the Net for retail stores near their home, 11,000 miles from the ship. A U.S. computer company hired workers in India to perform tasks for less pay than what its American workers earned. Executives signed a labor contract after meeting with several of the Indian workers, all of them sufficiently experienced. Months into the contract, the work was lagging far behind schedule. The executives flew to the scene and found to their surprise that the work was being performed by a different group of workers who lacked experience.

Email Battlefield: Military Families Many members of the armed forces face prolonged separation from their families and a high level of job stress. The spouses of U.S. Navy personnel at sea are left behind to run the household and fulfill other family duties and events, such as birthdays. Human resources officers and recruiters from the Army, Marines, Air Force and Coast Guard worry as the Navy does that overseas duty creates hardships that cause personnel to leave the service early. Is there any way to reduce the pains of family separation?

A wine connoisseur in Southern California had fits finding a local wine club to join. He knew only of clubs far from home. He finally discovered one in his neighborhood by browsing the bulletin board of a unique community intranet system. Outsourcing computer jobs, dealing with military family separations, finding a wine club on an intranet— welcome to the wide world of research conducted by UC Irvine’s Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations. CRITO brings together scholars, many of whom are GSM faculty members, to study how technology changes organizations and society. The Navy family, the intranet and two outsourcing studies—one on jobs overseas, the other on business process management—illustrate the variety and social impact of CRITO’s research, and demonstrate how GSM faculty members are leading the IT revolution.

Mary Gilly

Marketing Professor Mary Gilly and colleagues reporting for duty, Sir. If their three-year study for the Navy on newer communications technologies bears out their current hypothesis, there could be a victory at sea as well as on land for all military branches. Their project, just underway and scheduled to finish in 2005, will examine the impact of email and the Internet on household decisionmaking, familial relationships and employee morale. The study is expected to benefit not only all military branches but also private enterprise—consulting companies, oil rig operators and others with widely dispersed employees or units.

“We believe email and other newer technologies offer absent spouses a quick and inexpensive way to remain a part of household decisions and family events,” says Gilly. She and her research partners at Temple University and Cal State Long Beach expect the study will find that emails, e-greeting cards, photos and live web cams will strengthen family bonds in the military. Gilly’s team will conduct in-depth interviews with Navy personnel in San Diego, their families and support groups regarding decision-making by the absent spouses, attitudes

Nai-fu Chen’s ideas on banking reform can help nations avoid the “moral hazards” that often precipitate financial crisis in nations. Below, Chen meets with students after class.

Alladi Venkatesh and the wired home

about their family life and toward their jobs. “We hope to attend a family orientation for a battle group ready to be deployed to see what they say about email and family cohesion,” Gilly adds. In a separate study, Christine Beckman, assistant professor of organization and strategy, is managing a three-year study for the Navy on how the Internet and other computermediated communication (CMC) affects individuals, groups and organizations. Beckman and PhD student Taryn Stanko will interview approximately 25 Navy personnel on their personal and professional use of CMC, then conduct a written survey of up to 1,000 Navy enlisted personnel and officers.

Outsource Jobs “Many companies fail to adequately consider the costs that come with sending work to other countries,” says CRITO Director Ken Kraemer. Thus, some corporations wind up with surprises, headaches and unexpected costs of the magnitude of the firm whose labor contract with “experienced” workers in India was violated. On the other hand, companies such as General Electric have more than 20,000 employees in India and are reaping benefits from outsourcing jobs to other countries. Exult, a human resources outsourcing company based at UC Irvine’s Research Park, recently launched operations at its offshore unit in Mumbai.

“We anticipate that email and other new forms of communication can act as a ‘status equilizer’ among different social groups within organizations,” Beckman says. “These changes in communication patterns will likely lead to increased employee commitment through higher employee morale and higher retention rates. The Internet and CMC are tools that may help alleviate work-family conflict by allowing employees to feel they have more control over their job and home activities.”

All told, the current trend of outsourcing jobs to offshore locations—whether the experience is successful or not—has serious ramifications for employment in the United States. Kraemer and Jason Dedrick, a PhD student at GSM, began work this summer on a three-year study, funded by the Sloan Foundation and IBM Corporation, which will help managers assess the risks and rewards of outsourcing jobs.

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Ken Kraemer

Among the risks that Kraemer and Dedrick will analyze are:

outsourced processes. “And with so much technology infrastructure in the hands of outsiders,” Gurbaxani says, “they must build an appropriate IT infrastructure that can be integrated with external service providers.”

• Security. “Do companies compromise their need for security of intellectual property when they outsource work to other countries?” Kraemer asks. • Cost. “Would it be cheaper to set up your own shop in China or India as hiring a company in that country to do the work?”

The Wired Home

Vijay Gurbaxani

• Workforce tradeoffs. “How can companies, if they plan to outsource, keep good workers to manage the outsourcing process?”

• Role of IT. “How does the use of the information and communications technology enable firms to relocate knowledge work offshore?” Outsource Business Processes Numerous IT providers offer corporate clients a service called business process management, which transfers such activities as accounts payable/receivable from the company to the outside provider. Vendors charge much less than what corporations spend to conduct their own engineering design, human resources, software development and other business processes. “What used to require substantial investment in fixed assets can now be bought on a variable-cost basis from a service provider, which often has offshore delivery capability,” explains Vijay Gurbaxani, professor of information systems and director of the CRITO Industry/University Consortium. Gurbaxani is an internationally recognized expert on strategies for IT outsourcing. Earlier this year he won the Outsourcing World Achievement Award in the academic category from PricewaterhouseCoopers and Michael Corbett and Associates. Gurbaxani and a colleague from Pepperdine University have embarked on a three-year study for CRITO on outsourcing business processes. Gurbaxani describes the relevance of their study to the business world: “Companies are looking for guidance to figure out what processes are the best candidates for outsourcing, and how contracts for these services should be specified.” The study will examine how companies, in order to operate efficiently and compete in the global marketplace, must coordinate outsourced business processes with internal processes and integrate and leverage information from

High-speed Intranet service and gazillion-channel cable systems are becoming commonplace in new housing developments. A handful of communities across the country have taken the extra step by installing an intranet in which residents can offer their opinions about local issues, join community and social groups, exchange medical information with nearby medical facilities and check out the latest events at schools and shopping areas. Networked homes like this are the heart and soul of Alladi Venkatesh’s research interests. Venkatesh, professor of marketing, is one of the world’s leading authorities on networked homes. He has written several papers and hosted a worldwide conference on the subject at UCI’s Beckman Center last spring. Via interviews with families and other methods, he is studying whether a housing development in Southern California can blend the promise of new technology with its social utopian goal of being a successful planned community. Venkatesh and his assistants have interviewed 25 families to date and will add more in the coming months. Last July, he presented some of his initial findings at the annual Human-Computer Interaction Conference in Crete, Greece. He found that several online “regulars” in the community he is studying tend to dominate the intranet’s community discussions. “Other families complain that the dominators thwart an even-handed expression of views. And technology plays a key role in formation and expansion of community groups, such as the club that the wine connoisseur joined, when intranet users see them posted on the community bulletin board.” Venkatesh says technology is changing home life in other ways: • Individuals can now maintain relationships with forms of communication that offer low and high intimacy. • The intranet improves the scheduling of events and gives families more security measures. • Wired networks enable people to choose a form of communication that suits their needs.

Leadership

are

IRISH Eyes SMILING on IT By John Gregory

On Paul Tallon’s Web site, browsers will find a virtual Ireland: links to Irish travel spots, a virtual tour of the Guinness brewery and all sorts of Gaelic words and phrases. Go n-eire an bother leat is Gaelic for “May the road rise to meet you”—that is, may you not be overcome by obstacles. Tallon’s teaching career and studies are all about obstacles— how future and current business managers can avoid them in the complex world of technology. Tallon, a 34-year-old native of Ireland and PhD graduate of GSM in 1994, is assistant professor of information systems at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management. He also conducts studies on information technology as a research associate for CRITO, UC Irvine’s Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations. One of his favorites was a study in 2000 on how IT contributes to improving business productivity. Tallon edited sections of a book, Advances in Management Information Systems Series, to be published next year.

philosophy of science. Alladi turned popular concepts upside down. Instead of following the phrase, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ he urged us to ‘break it anyway.’ He was telling us to broaden our horizons.” While at GSM, Tallon worked on surveys with Ken Kraemer, Vijay Gurbaxani and other faculty members. He served as an instructor at GSM from 1997 to 2001, then joined the faculty at Boston College. His fondness for Ireland hasn’t stopped him from traveling to far-off places like Zimbabwe and the Czech Republic, and serving as an IT consultant in Geneva, Switzerland with the United Nations and World Trade Organization during the 1990s. When Tallon is on the road, he is game for trying different foods. “My only bad experience was in the Philippines when I thought I was getting minced meat and found out too late it was pigs ears.”

Paul Tallon, PhD

After receiving his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at University College Dublin, Tallon conducted cost-benefit analyses for Price Waterhouse in New York City. To expand his career interests, he sought his doctoral degree in management at GSM. “Two classes at GSM were turning points for me,” Tallon says in his subtle Irish accent. “A course in IT and society made me aware of the huge impact of information technology. The real eye opener was Alladi Venkatesh’s class, the

Tallon and his wife Cathy are settled comfortably into the Boston area. At the Carroll School of Management, he teaches information management and analysis, IT for financial services, e-commerce and, starting this fall, an introductory course on IT. “I have to walk a fine line between students who are technically proficient and those who are techno-phobic, who can’t even program a VCR. I tell them, ‘That’s OK, because if you want to become a good driver, you don’t have to know how a combustion engine works. You must master other skills.’” Go n-eire an bother leat. 7

Students

Get MBA, JUMPSTART career Four new students with different IT job backgrounds have something in common: they believe an MBA degree will provide a critical boost to their careers. Here they explain why the Executive, Full Time or Fully Employed MBA program suits their job goals. Rick Neff

exploring the current industry buzzword, ‘financial engineering,’” he says. Industry watchers predict a slingshot effect in IT job opportunities over the next few years, as millions of baby boomers retire, Neff says. He hopes these shifting demographics and increased demand will fuel his next start-up.

After selling two IT start-up firms for just over $18 million, serial entrepreneur Rick Neff isn’t satisfied with his successes. “I’ve always followed my gut feelings without the benefit of a formal business education,” says Neff. He found that funding a start-up is risky business, and it made him nervous. So this fall Neff entered GSM’s Executive MBA program to fine-tune his abilities in preparation for his next venture. He and brother Dennis created Bicore Monitoring Systems, developer of a pioneering diagnostic pulmonary monitor. His next venture was Portsmith, Inc., maker of connectivity options for handheld mobile computing devices. Neff sold both start-ups to buyers with expanded distribution channels and financial backing.

Neff ’s entrée into IT began with a BS degree in electrical engineering and an applied mathematics minor at Carnegie Mellon University, followed by 15 years of corporate and entrepreneurial experience, including an internship with Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Neff chose the EMBA program because “it is full of dynamic, interesting people, all of whom have terrific professional and personal experiences to share,” he says. With EMBA classes meeting four days a month, he can pursue side projects while enjoying the Southern California lifestyle. —Aurora D. Abt Doug Panter

Rick Neff

Shifting careers is a lot of work for most people, but it’s fun and games for Doug Panter, Fully Employed MBA ’06. He’s turned a passion for play into a career track with an IT basis.

These sales were Neff ’s wake-up call to learn more about funding a new business. For Portsmith, Neff and partners provided their own startup capital, shouldering all the business risks themselves. Next time, Neff will use the OPM method—“other people’s money.” With his persuasive charm and innovative ideas, getting a meeting should prove easy. His challenge? Acquiring the “businessspeak” to woo blue-chip investors. He hopes to learn this dialect at GSM. Neff ’s reinvention process began before he entered GSM—he’s taken UCI extension courses to gain exposure to nanotechnology and the C# and ASP.Net programming languages. “I’m interested in integrating Web services with emerging technology, possibly

Panter taught elementary and high school for six years, also coaching volleyball and track. He didn’t see teaching as a long-term career, nor was he interested in school administration.

Doug Panter

Panter spent the summer of 2001 exploring new career options. A longtime sports fan and Sony PlayStation enthusiast, Panter tracked down a marketing contact at Sony Computer Entertainment America in San Diego. That contact is now his boss, and Panter works as a marketing specialist in Sony’s sports game department, 989 Sports.

Although he had no professional experience in marketing or the interactive entertainment industry, Panter’s knowledge of sports and video games made him a good fit for his new job. “All those years of watching SportsCenter on ESPN finally paid off,” he says. Panter chose to get an MBA to turbocharge his career. The fully Employed MBA program allows him to keep his job while going to school. “Because I don’t come from a business background, the degree will round out my knowledge of business,” he says. “It’s also a great way to open doors. The interactive entertainment field in general is burgeoning.” Panter creates marketing materials for videogames across all media, including packaging design and online, print and television advertising. He educates Sony’s sales staff on new products and gives presentations to key accounts. As a teacher, Panter developed his public speaking skills and the ability to tailor his message to his audience. His years of coaching have helped him bring multiple corporate departments together for a common goal. Thinking of changing careers? “Networks are invaluable,” Panter says. “GSM has been emphasizing this since our first residential course. I landed my job by getting a name and running with it.” —Imran Husain Ray Ie Throughout the 1990s, the IT field seemed to hold unlimited potential for talented workers. But the economic downturn of the past few years has resulted in massive layoffs, forcing many to seek employment in other fields. This grim reality hit Ray Ie and Brian Kreitzer, both of whom were laid off from BroadVision, a leading e-business software company. Determined to regain high-paying jobs, they find themselves back in school in the Full-Time MBA Class of 2005. Ie joined BroadVision in 2000 as a software implementation consultant in Chicago. He was laid off after two years but stayed with BroadVision as a contractor for six months, then became a freelance Web developer. But facing a saturated domestic market, with added competition from overseas freelancers, Ie decided to earn an MBA degree.

“While I was freelancing, I had a number of ideas for entrepreneurial ventures, but didn’t know how to execute them,” Ie says. “I want to learn how to take an idea and make it an actual business.” As an implementation consultant, Ie developed a talent for problem-solving. “We were always short on time or had unforeseen issues cropping up,” he says. “I began anticipating problems before they arose and found ways to prevent them.” Ie hopes to apply the management theories he learns at GSM to a government or non-governmental organization focused on international economic development. “I want to contribute to something that generates a wider payoff than corporate profits,” he says. “So many of the world’s social problems are rooted in economic problems.” —IH Brian Kreitzer Brian Kreitzer joined BroadVision as a consultant in El Segundo, Calif. until he was laid off in 2001. He took a job stocking products at Home Depot in Huntington Beach, Calif. After five months, he was promoted to “racetrack manager,” responsible for customer service, coaching associates on the sales process and assigning tasks. His GSM education is already helping Kreitzer become a better manager. He initially took a very straightforward Brian Kreitzer approach to assigning tasks to employees, but this didn’t always motivate them. “At our residential course, I learned that you need to see the situation through three different lenses: political, cultural and functional. I had been looking only through the functional lens,” he says. Kreitzer will be able to transfer valuable job skills to a future career in business finance or real estate investments. For example, he can apply his analytical thinking skills from writing software code to financial statements as well. And working at Home Depot has given him a new appreciation for customer service and interpersonal skills. “Whatever your function in a given business, you have customers. You need the skills to serve them well and retain them,” he says. —IH

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Ray Ie

Alumni

GRADS Create TopTech JOBS An MBA degree from GSM was the ticket to top technology jobs for three alumni. They describe their career paths and offer a glimpse of the future of IT. Michael Bellomo An MBA degree in 2002 gave Michael Bellomo a new chance to write about what truly fascinates him—the intersection of technology and business. Bellomo wrote IT bestsellers as Windows 2000 Administration for Dummies and Unix: Your Visual Blueprint to the Universe of Unix. In September 2002, he ghost-wrote Itanium Rising, a memoir for Jim Carlson, former vice president of marketing at Hewlett Packard. He’s hard at work on another book about Internet retailer eBay. Bellomo is a paragon for MBA Career Centers everywhere. During his post-MBA job search, he tracked his efforts and created a time/effectiveness study of what approach worked best. Conclusion: cold calling is the most effective job search technique, hands-down. Refusing to accept rejection from ARES, a boutique consulting firm with government and private contracts, Bellomo called the company president to introduce himself and describe his qualifications. The president invited him for an interview and subsequently offered him a job. “I and four other GSM grads—May Gritz, ’97, Stephen Jordan, ’02, Robert Runnells, ’02, and Isabel Satra, ’02— practically founded the Seal Beach branch of ARES,” he says. His position gives him entree into the intriguing world of aerospace design. Last spring he worked with the task force investigating the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster. His job was to set up an IT data collection system on the shuttle fragments. As a result of an ARES contract with Boeing in Huntington Beach, Calif., Bellomo landed a role as the “voice of Boeing” in a multimedia presentation. The presentation will address

Michael Bellomo

NASA and U.S. Congress on Boeing’s new orbital space plane, the next generation shuttle. —Susannah Abbey Michael Mahon When Mike Mahon was earning his MBA degree in 1980-’81, he saw the future of management, and it was information technology. “GSM is right on in its ITM emphasis,” Mahon says. “Employers today are looking for well-rounded, skilled professionals who can bridge the business and technology environments and who have good communications skills. CEOs and CFOs are actively involved in IT budgets and operations to propel their firms forward. They realize they must have ‘best in class’ Web services and customer applications to be competitive.” Mahon is one of 20 or so principals for IBM Global Services, Western region. Based in La Jolla, Calif., he commutes to Orange County every couple of weeks to provide integrated technology services for customers, which means helping them tie technology to their business practices. He sells IBM’s systems and services for infrastructure and systems management, security and privacy and business continuity/recovery services. Mahon has his own “practice” and is responsible for his own clients, staff, performance measurements, profits and losses. “Firms today have made most of their hardware, software and application purchases, but they haven’t fully utilized these assets,” Mahon says. “We are helping them to maximize applications using IBM’s On Demand technologies so that they have little or no downtime. We ensure that their operating systems and business applications are always available, even during power outages or hacker attacks.” Customers won’t lose revenue, because they can move to IBM and do business in a duplicate data center.

Mahon remembers when IBM didn’t hire outsiders, only undergraduates who were taught the IBM way. In 1994, IBM suffered a “neardeath experience” and executed major layoffs. Overhauling its corporate culture, IBM now hires experienced professionals such as Mahon who act as senior managers for other companies, bringing their knowledge into IBM. “IBM today is a matrixed organization, no hierarchy. It has come from back office to front office,” he says.

accounting, going back and reconstructing their financial records. Diligent networking in Silicon Valley paid off, and her startup successes and reputation grew. Ruben mastered the ability to communicate complex technology ideas to the business world. She has helped start about one dozen high-tech companies, serving as acting CFO, taking engineers through the rigors of business plans, presentations and attracting venture capital. Michael Mahon

Asset management has been a hot growth area for the last one and a half years. As firms have cut costs, keeping track of IT assets has gained priority. This involves tracking software licenses, knowing what firms have and what they are using, so that IT investment will pay off, he says. Mahon is a totally mobile manager, traveling with his laptop computer to IBM branch offices that house customers’ operating systems and data.

Since March 2002, Ruben’s job as director of government affairs at Keyhole, Inc. has been a magic carpet ride. Started with funding from Sony Broadband Entertainment, Keyhole creates threedimensional models of the earth using aerial and satellite imagery streamed over the Internet to standard PC users. This technology is used on television news “fly-over” visuals.

Mahon is a former chair of the GSM Alumni Network and a Mentor for the last three years. He has organized IT seminars for GSM and the Orange County business community. “In the past ten years, job growth was in IT services. In the future, job growth will be in markets and managers.” ––Linda McCrerey Andria Ruben Andria Ruben

IT entrepreneurship is a perfect pursuit for fast-tracker Andria Ruben, ’90. Her career as a startup czar grew from a single, indelible lesson in GSM’s Introduction to Management class: every business succeeds financially and fails financially. “I decided then and there to understand numbers. I overcame hatred for math for one thing—the bottom line,” she says. After earning her MBA at age 22, Ruben envisioned herself as a chief executive. Finding no entry-level CEO jobs, she joined Coopers Lybrand as an auditor, then did consulting work. Ruben quickly found her niche: helping IT engineers with zero business or accounting skills start their own companies. Without financial records, the engineers couldn’t pass financial audits. So she did forensic

Ruben teaches technology and conducts training for long-term governmental customers such as U.S. Geologic Survey and U.S. Department of Defense. Based in Mountain View, Calif., she travels extensively, spending about half-time in Washington, D.C. This year she set up systems with engineers and military personnel for peacekeeping forces in the Congo. 3-D imagery is still so new that many users aren’t familiar with its vast potential, especially in disaster prevention and crisis management. “There’s nothing government does that’s not geo-referenced—that is, based on location. We enable large amounts of data to be accessed on desktops of many users, quickly,” she says. “Better decisions happen if you have the right tools.” ––LM

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Alumni

CLASS NOTES 1980s Gerry Gallagher, ’86, sold Oblique Filing Systems after eight years and plans to relocate in Southern California. 1990s 2003-04 GSM Alumni Network Board, front row, from left: Ed Thomas, ’99; Pam Adams, ’98; Greg Lai, ’88; James S. Dalton, ’91, is president of Stanton Dumin, ’00. Middle Row: Leslie Daff, ’89; Steve Acterman, ’99; Sandra Findly; Jeff Pratt, ’99; Eco Soul, Inc., a not-for-profit involved Bob Bettwy. ’92. Last Row: Maxwell Seraj, ’04; Sheila Burke, ’01; Kyle van Hoften, ’97; Peter Cullen, ’82. Not pictured: Robert Sterling, ’01; Kristin Clarke Batoy, ’96; Jasmine Shodja, ’01; Enrique Cruzalegui, ’02. in environmental projects (www.ecosoul. org). Their current emphasis is educational outreach about the future hydrogen economy. James received his MESM (masters of environhalf years as a marketing manager, was recently named the mental science and management) from the Bren School of director of marketing for the western region for Expanets. Environmental Science and Management at UC Santa Kyle and wife, Kathe, welcomed Ashley Nicoll in June 2002. Barbara, where he is a lecturer in the global studies departKyle is also an indoor cycling instructor at Lakeshore Towers ment. He lives in Santa Barbara. Jeffrey H. Wagner, ’92, is 24-hour Fitness and volunteers many hours on the GSM vice president of finance and taxation at Nextwave Telecom, Alumni Network Board of Directors. Karyn Womach, ’97, Inc. Jeff Herzfeld, ’94, is senior vice president, and husband, Curtis, are pleased to announce the birth of Pharmaceutical Group, McKesson Corporation in San their second son Tristan Gregory in January. Pamela M. Francisco, and has two children. Rachel Schreiman, ’94, Adams, ’98, is serving as president of the GSM Alumni moved with her husband and three boys to Fairfax County, Network Board of Directors and works as financial consultnorthern Virginia. Debra Goldman (Friedlander), ’95, and ant for A.G. Edwards & Sons, Inc. in Newport Beach, Calif. her husband announce the birth of a son, Braden Jake, in Rajeev Agnihotri, ’98, was promoted to manager at Deloitte May. Steve McLain, ’95, and his wife, Magda, welcomed Consulting in August. His daughter, Riya Agnihotri, was new daughter Loren Elizabeth in August. Christopher B. born in September. Kurt de Pfyffer, ’98, writes, “Sarah and I Rudolph, ’95, recently returned to Southern California bought a home in Dana Point last summer and have been from Seattle, after two years as the director of 747 program enjoying the weekends shopping at Home Depot!” Ryan quality, Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Chris now serves as Jesser, ’98, announces the birth of a daughter, Abigail the director of quality, systems safety and reliability for Elizabeth, born in August in Boston, Mass. Shana Gayle Space Systems, a component of Boeing Integrated Defense Martin (Levy), ’98, and husband, Sean Patrick, are living in Systems, in Huntington Beach, Calif. Chris and his wife Huntington Beach, where she works for ACT managing disPatricia, ’95, are expecting their third baby in 2004. Katie tribution centers in seven states. William Millard, ’98, Koehler Bianchi, ’96, and husband Gino are proud to accepted a project management position with Perot Systems announce the birth of their first son, Luca, in May. Katie in September. Baris Tanir and Deniz Erkan, both ’98, continues to work with Marriott International as vice presifounded a supply chain management consulting company in dent of human resources, and after stints in Mexico City Los Angeles (www.scmdoctors.com). Benjamin Chen, ’99, and Miami, she is again living in Orange County. John and has accepted a sales operations manager position at Bausch Myuriel (Kim) von Aspen, both ’96, are happy to announce & Lomb in their surgical division in San Dimas, Calif. He the birth of their daughter, Lauren Sophia, in June. Jodeen and wife, Hellen, announce the birth of Ashlyn in April. (Madren) Howes, ’97, is the director of staffing at Universal Eric H. Y. Deng, ’99, is director of engineering, developing Studios Hollywood. She and husband, Jeremy, welcomed high-end stainless steel kitchen and restaurant appliances for their first child, a daughter, Sydnee Ann, in July. Alfred Jade Products Company, a division of Maytag. First-born Ricci, ’97, returned to Orange County after four years of son, Payton Tyler Deng, turns one year old in October. living in Europe. After completing his MBA, he spent two Charles Evans, ’99, is now with Corky McMillin Companies years with Ernst & Young International based in Vienna, as vice president of finance. Ari Potash, ’99, writes, “I got Austria. While assistant vice president at Deutsche Bank in hitched in September to my lovely wife Jamie, moved to Frankfurt, Germany, Al met his wife Isabel and they now Florida, and accepted a new position with the same reside in Costa Mesa. Kyle van Hoften, ’97, after two and company, Household/HSBC.” Jeff Pratt, '99, recently

accepted a new position with Option One Mortgage in Irvine, Calif., as senior manager of portfolio risk. Jeff recently married Dana McKinnon. Sasha Talebi, ’99, is managing the first in a series of master-feeder hedge funds (i.e., both offshore and domestic investors) based in Cayman Islands with long/short equity trading model and marketneutral strategy. Sasha and his wife, Shadi, are proud to announce the arrival of Ryan Sebastian in July. Veronica Chestnoy Taylor, ’99, just bought a home out in the horse country of Tewksbury Township, New Jersey, and hopes any old pals from GSM will call her when visiting the area. 2000s Tony Armand, ’00, announces the birth of daughter Alexandra. Dina Ashker, ’00, married William M. Young in a family ceremony in Niagara Falls, New York, July 4, and they currently live in Bristol, RI. James Cummiskey, ’00, has joined the Boeing Company as the director of tactical systems, Integrated Defense Systems, in Seal Beach, Calif. Christophe Diederen, ’00, became a dad for the first time of little boy named Romain. He plans to move from Arlon, Belgium to Melen, Belgium in order to reduce commuting time to the office and enjoy life in his native city, Liege. Maura Hudson, ’02, accepted a position as director of marketing for the Southern California offices of Trammell Crow Company (NYSE:TCC), the third largest commercial real estate firm in North America. Doug Saulsbury, ’00, and his wife Monique are celebrating the birth of their second child, Lauren Rose, born in June. Joseph Dill, DDS, ’01, has accepted the position of director of dental products with Premera Blue Cross of Washington, a newly created position designed to focus specific attention to the dental markets in

Taiwan and Japan alumni get-togethers: Professor Joanna Ho meets with GSM alumni in Tokyo, Japan and Taipei, Taiwan—business leaders who help with the school’s recruiting efforts. Taipei alumni who attended: Jason Kan, Eric Wang, Eric Tseng, Eugene Yang, Mark Wang, Simon Jiang, Sophia

Washington, Alaska, Oregon and Arizona. Sean Dyer, ’01, is now senior associate at Grant Thornton and moved back to Southern California. Kevin Henson, ’01, is strategy and analysis specialist at Boeing. He married Deanna Lee Douglas, was promoted, and is moving to St. Louis, Missouri. Stephen F. Wehling, ’01, obtained the Project Managment Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute. He has relocated to the San Diego office of Verizon Wireless where he was promoted to senior member of technical staff of the headquarters IT strategic planning and engineering group. Pravin Datar, ’02, joined SAP America as applications consultant in the strategic enterprise management wing of the company. Jeff and Audrena Liu, both ’02, welcomed their first child, Athan, in August. Jeff is a financial analyst at Kia Motors. Audrena is a business analyst at The Boeing Company. William A. Blackwell, ’03, has transitioned to PIMCO's London office to start up fund administration and shareholder servicing capabilities for the firm’s offshore mutual fund platforms based in Dublin, Ireland and Luxembourg. He and his wife Martha are expected to be in London for the next three to five years and can be reached via e-mail at [email protected]. Brett Boyd, ’03, is attending the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland for a one-year masters of science degree program in pharmaceutical analysis, where he is specializing in quality and management. James A. Ferguson, ’03, is the president of Camino West Coast Services, aka The Tire Guys Goodyear chain. Lori Devaney, ’00, has returned to work after 18 months at home with her children. “I’m spearheading the Entrepreneurial Services Division of Scott, Bankhead & Co. in Santa Ana, Calif.”

Wu, Peggy Hu. Tokyo alumni include: Masayuki Yamada, ’99, who helps keep Japan alumni connected; Masafumi Koizumi, ’98; Sadato Tanaka, ’01; Masahito Hikawa; Yu Nagata, ’00; Keisuke Kimura, ’02; Yasuhiro Iseki, ’03; Hideki Kogishi, ’01; JoAnne Jennings, ’00.

Alumni: Check news, photos and career services on your password-protected GSM Alumni Network Database site at http://www.gsm.uci.edu/go/alumni. Questions? Contact the Alumni Relations office, 949-824-7167.

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Fall events are fun under sunny California skies. New Full Time MBA students mingle at orientation reception. GSM Family Picnic features food, face painting, dunk tank, reggae band, bounce house, games.

Coming Up GSM & Alumni Events * Open to Public November 6

GSM Alumni Network Mixer. Info, 949-824-7167.*

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Veterans’ Day Holiday

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GSM Executive Speaker Series. Center for Leadership Development event. Info, 949-824-2728, [email protected].*

27-28 Thanksgiving Holiday December 3

Real Estate Program Breakfast Series. Info, 949-675-0603, [email protected].*

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GSM Alumni Network Holiday Event, “A Christmas Carol.” Info, 949-824-7167.

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Winter Break Begins

n nt nti rm at

January 9

Winter Quarter Begins

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Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday

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GSM Alumni Network Breakfast Speaker Series, with Orange County Register Publisher/CEO N. Christian Anderson III. Info, 949-824-7167.*

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Business Plan Competition Kick-Off. Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation event. Info, 949-824-1172, [email protected].*

28-30 Corporate Directors Conference. Executive Education event. Info, http://www.gsm.uci.edu/go/cdp. Visit us on the Web at http://www.gsm.uci.edu

University of California, Irvine Graduate School of Management Irvine, California 92697-3130 25

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